


He Called Her Natalia

by aschuylersister



Category: Marvel
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky and Nat through the years, Bucky and Natasha have depressing life stories, F/M, Natasha Romanov Feels, Not really MCU compliant, Red Room-era Natasha, buckynat - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 05:17:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10824555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aschuylersister/pseuds/aschuylersister
Summary: Three times James Buchanan Barnes saved Natalia Alianovna Romanova... and the one time she couldn't save him...........This work is purely fiction, all characters belong to Marvel, etc. etc.





	1. 1989

**Author's Note:**

> This entire work takes place at four points during Natasha's life. Bucky is present for all of them, but he's always the same age, because ya know, cryo/HYDRA/all that lovely stuff.  
> Also, for these creative purposes I'm going the MCU route and saying that Natasha was born in 1984.

Whoever said snow is soft is a dirty liar. At least, the girl who sat in the dirty snow of the slums on the outskirts of Stalingrad thought so.

It was January, so very very long ago. The snow felt more like broken glass underneath her twisted limbs, packed solid and sharp with shards of ice. It was so cold it burned. Her ragged calico dress was too thin for this weather, and she’d lost her coat in the fire. The fire that little Natalia was certain took place years ago. Or maybe it wasn't years ago, simply the stubborn naivety of her five year old mind refusing to accept the events of the last twenty four hours.

The Soldier wasn't supposed to be there to see this.

He wasn't supposed to save her.

Maybe it was a mistake that he was.

Maybe Natalia would have been better off dead in the snow, her lips swollen and blue and her hands black with frostbite.

If Natalia had known what she would see in that Red Room, maybe she would have chosen death.

Or maybe it was fate, for both of them.

But for some reason, now that his mission was complete and this sector of the village was rubble, the Soldier didn't immediately disappear back into the shadows of HYDRA.

The crying was grating on him.

The Winter Soldier was a machine. No mercy. No survivors. He should have killed this tiny, mewling excuse for a human being. She could have seen something. And everyone knows children can't keep their mouths shut.

But the Soldier had been out of cryo for a while. And that tiny tiny piece of Bucky Barnes that still lived inside of him was up and thrashing about in his chest, and it ached for the little girl in the snow.

Cursing himself and bracing his shoulders against the impending punishment he would receive for this, he strode silently over the smoldering remains of a community and crouched before the child.

Strangely enough, the girl wasn't frightened by this monster of a man before her. The Soldier didn't expect that, and he respected her for it. Even if she was only a child.

“Kholodnov,” she sobbed. _Cold._

“Ne plach’,” he growled. _Don't cry._ “Kak vas zovut?” _What is your name?_ She only stared at him, shell shocked and doing her best not to cry. The time for crying in the snow was over. The trauma and the grief was finally hitting her like a blow.

“Ne plach’, kotenok” he said, a little softer. _Don't cry, kitten._ “YA znayu mesto, gde vy budete v bezopasnosti.” _I know a place where you’ll be safe._ The Soldier lifted the girl onto his metal arm, a little roughly, and she yelped in surprise and pain. He began treading back through the snow, back to the one place where somewhere in his broken brain he associated with safety. Broken indeed was his brain, because the Red Room was the furthest thing from safe for little Natalia.

But it did one thing for her that the snows of Stalingrad never could.

It kept her alive.

At the cost of everything she was.


	2. 1997

The Winter Soldier was going to kill somebody today.

Not just anybody. A girl.

Red Room policies apply no matter what, even if you're fighting a trainer or an adult. Failure is not tolerated. If you want to live, you learn to win.

And the Winter Soldier never loses.

Certainly not to a scrawny pre-teen.

As he stepped out into the ring, he resolved not to pay much mind to his opponent. The less he knew about his opponent, the easier it would be to kill her. Which was why it hurt like a bullet to the brain when he saw the flaming red curls sprouting off the top of her head.

He had seen those curls before. A long time ago. A lifetime ago. But he would recognize them anywhere. And if he couldn't recognize them, he would always recognize those eyes. Those haunted, empty, sea foam green eyes.

The Soldier didn't gasp, but the sharp intake of breath through his nose was enough to make the girl lift her head up. She remembered him too. Her savior in the snow. The man with the metal arm. The Red Room could take all she had, but it could never take the image of his face out of her soul. The image she had clung to for years, every time things got bad, because she associated it with safety. She associated it with home.

But Natalia was older now, wiser. She had heard the stories of James Barnes, the American who her very own captors had turned into a monster. The monster who she was supposed to become. Somewhere in her thirteen-year-old brain, she knew that her savior would have to kill her.

That didn't mean she was going down without a fight.

That didn't mean it didn't hurt when in a voice too soft for anyone but her to hear, the man with the metal arm whispered, “Kotenok?”

Natalia refused to meet his eyes. She simply crouched into a fighting stance, fists shaking slightly.

And in that moment, the Soldier knew. He could not kill this girl. Not now. Not after he’d saved her once. Somewhere so deep and buried in his soul that he as well as HYDRA couldn't find it, he felt that this broken creature of fire and ash belonged to him. She was his responsibility. And he could not let her die.

That didn't mean he couldn't make it look real.

The two flew at each other, a blur of limbs and fists. The Soldier noted with pride how fast Natalia was, how agile and strong.

But not strong enough. Not to face him. Not yet.

There was a sickening crack as metal met bone, and Natalia stumbled back, clutching her ribs. A Red Room scientist standing on the edge of the ring shook his head. “Slishkom medlenno, Natalia.” _Too slow, Natalia._

Natalia flushed red and ducked her head.

_Natalia_ , the Soldier thought. _Her name is Natalia._

Natalia came back at the Soldier with renewed force, but it still wasn't enough.

Until suddenly, it was.

The Soldier saw it coming. The kick was aimed perfectly, packed with power and agility. It would have leveled anyone else. But the Soldier saw it coming. He played it out in his head. He had enough time to catch her ankle, force her to the ground. Get her in a chokehold. And kill her.

But not today. He let the kick catch him in the chest, let the momentum take him down.

The look on Natalia’s face as she stood over him, mouth agape, was worth it.


	3. 2009

Natalia Romanov no longer existed. The girl the Red Room had trained no longer existed.

Natasha Romanoff, a S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent who sometimes trusted her way-too-happy handler Clint Barton, took her place.

Natasha wasn't sure if she was happy. Going straight, yes, but happy… Well, at least she wasn't one of the bad guys anymore.

The black SUV was going faster than it should along the cliffs of Odessa, but the engineer she was escorting to the safe house _would not shut up_. His voice was grating on Natasha, clawing at her brain, and she wanted to get to the house as fast as possible. At least there they could be in separate rooms.

She almost missed the flash of metal on the side of the road, just up ahead. The unmistakable sound of a gunshot.

_Crack._

_Crack._

_Crack._

_Crack._

Four gunshots, four tires. Natasha had time to be vaguely impressed. Few people could have been so accurate.

But right now, she had bigger problems. Careening towards a three hundred and fifty foot drop was one of them.

“Open your door,” she told the panicking engineer. When he didn't do as she said, she leaned across him and did it herself. She undid their seat belts, and tackled the engineer out of the car just in time. She watched as the car tumbled into oblivion, before turning to the task at hand. There was a sniper somewhere nearby, and she had a mission. “Get behind me,” she barked. The engineer happily complied with this order.

Natasha did not expect the sniper in question to show his face, but sure enough, a man appeared around the corner of the road, dressed all in black, swaggering a little as he walked, his weight leaning to the left. His left arm gleamed in the sun. His metal left arm. The gun in his hands was pointed straight at Natasha’s heart.

_No._

The despair built in Natasha’s throat. She's a failure. She's failed her simple mission. Not only that, but her death will come at the hands of the man she thought to be her savior.

The signs are quick, but unmistakable.

Pupils dilate. Nostrils flair. Human fingers twitch.

Bucky Barnes recognizes her. His Natalia. His kotenok. All grown up, but as hard to miss as she was all those years ago.

Bucky Barnes can't kill her. His soul won't allow it.

The engineer cowered behind Natasha, on his knees, his hands clutching her legs and his forehead pressed to her hip. Natasha couldn't find pity. Only disgust. If you're going to die, you might as well stand up and take it like a man.

_Crack._

_So this is it_. The man with the metal arm has let her down, just like everyone else in her life, and now she's going to die because of it.

Wait.

Why is she still standing? She should be long dead by now.

Behind her, the engineer falls to the ground with a _thud._

Natasha Romanoff looks down and sees blood oozing out of a bullet hole just above her right hip. Too high to have fractured the bone. Too far over to have punctured a major organ.

It seemed that Natasha Romanoff was going to live to fight another day.

But when she looked up, the man with the metal arm was gone. Her savior had disappeared yet again.


	4. 2014

Natasha Romanoff had lived a thousand lifetimes, and every single one was worse than the last. That is, until she met Clint Barton. Until she joined S.H.I.E.L.D.. Until she became an Avenger.

She had been to hell and back, over and over, until she looked in the mirror and couldn't see who she was anymore. It took Clint years to bring her back from the edge. It took years still and a joint effort from the Avengers, her family, to help her find who she was.

One thing remained the same.

The man with the metal arm. Her savior.

Natasha was many things, but stupid wasn't one of them.

She knew he had purposely left her alive in Odessa. She knew that he had let her win, that day in the Red Room. She knew he had pulled her from the snows of Stalingrad.

She knew she owed him her life.

And it grated on her, needled at her skin, that she could owe such a debt to someone who she had thought to be long dead.

Maybe that's why she was now going through such great lengths to find him.

Sure, she had told Steve, Sam and Fury she was going to Europe to figure out some new covers. Fury must have been really preoccupied to believe that one. Or if he didn't, it was nice of him not to say anything. Because he knew better than anyone that Natasha Romanoff was always prepared. She had dozens of covers, buried so deep that even SHIELD couldn't find them. 

No, she wasn't going to Bucharest to find Cassandra Clare, Rozaliya Manorovsky, or Hailee Stone.

She was going to find the man with the metal arm.

Maybe when she'd given Steve the file on Bucky Barnes, she'd left one itty bitty piece of paper out. A lease on a one room studio apartment in Bucharest, buried deep in the shadiest of town.

Maybe she felt the tiniest bit guilty about lying to Steve.

That thirteen year old girl from the Red Room felt no such thing.

At least, that was Natasha’s justification as she climbed the steps to apartment number 442.

She knocked cautiously, hands shaking slightly. After all these years, could he possibly still remember her?

The only response to her insistent rapping was silence. She turned the knob slowly. A simple deadbolt. She could probably break this door down by slamming into it hard enough.

Naturally, that was precisely what she did.

Everything in her was prepared for a fight. 

Nothing in her was prepared for what she saw.

Her savior, her soul, everything she had staked her life around, was lying on a dirty mattress, bleeding out.

His hair was matted with red, his limbs were twisted at odd angles, and his skin was grey. For a terrible moment, she thought he was dead.

But then his eyes opened, clear blue amidst the red.

His voice came out a broken rasp. “It's you.”

There was a rag, lying on the edge of the dirty sink, and Natasha snatched it up before rushing to his side. She scanned his body frantically, but the blood seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once. Helplessly, she cleaned the worst of it off of his face.

“What happened to you?” She whispered, uncomprehending.

Bucky coughed, and his lips glistened red. “HYDRA happened to me. Not all of them were destroyed in D.C. They found me.” More coughing. “Left me here to die. You should go. They might be back for the body.”

Natasha shook her head, the lump in her throat growing more painful with the second. “I'm not going anywhere.”

Bucky weakly moved a hand from the mattress to her knee. “Glad I got to see you… One more time.”

Natasha could only sit, dumbfounded. It felt like her world had been yanked out from under her feet. “How can I… How could I… You saved me… So many times. And now I can't save you. James, how can I…?”

“But you did save me, Natalia.” Natalia. He called her Natalia. No one had called her Natalia in so long. “Saving you was the first human thing I did as him. The only human thing I did. The best bit of good I ever did. The thing I held onto inside, even when he was making me do terrible things.” Bucky pressed his human hand to her chest, right over her heart. Natasha covered it with her own. “Natalia. You would have made it. Even if I couldn't have saved you. You're strong. So strong.”

Natasha was crying openly now. “No. No, I wouldn't. I'm not strong. No one knows it, but I'm not.”

Bucky was staring at the ceiling now, into something she couldn't see. “Tell Steve I love him.”

Natasha choked on a sob. “No, James. You're not leaving me yet.” Bucky coughed, and more blood dripped out of the corner of his mouth. Natasha shook him, and it looked like it hurt him, but she didn't care. “James? James? Oh, God.” She pressed her head into his human arm, shoulders shaking as she sobbed. “How am I gonna make it when I don't have you around to save me?”

Shaky fingers combed through her hair. “Moy kotenok.”

**Author's Note:**

> All the Russian in this is straight off Google Translate. So if you are a native Russian speaker and some of it is wrong, I apologize. But I think it works for the purposes of this story.


End file.
